520 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



Compare this with the answer which Mr. Martineau puts 

 into the mouth of his physicist, and with which I am 

 generally credited by Mr IvLirtineau's readers, both in Eng- 

 land and America: " ' It [the problem of consciousness] 

 does not daunt me at all.. Of course you understand that 

 all along my atoms have been affected by gravitation and 

 polarity; and now I have only to insist with Fechner on a 

 difference among molecules: there are the inorganic, 

 which can change only their place, like the particles in an 

 undulation; and there are the organic, which can change 

 their order, as in a globule that turns itself inside out. 

 With an adequate number of these our problem will be 

 manageable/ ' Likely enough/ we may say [' entirely 

 unlikely/ say I], ' seeing how careful you are to provide 

 for all emergencies; and if any hitch should occur in the 

 next step, where you will have to pass from mere sentiency 

 to thought and will, you can again look in upon your 

 atoms, and fling among them a handful of Leibnitz's 

 monads, to serve as souls in little, and be ready, in a latent 

 form, with that Vorstellungs-fahigkeit which our pictur- 

 esque interpreters of nature so much prize/' 



"But surely," continues Mr. Martineau, "you must 

 observe that this < matter' of yours alters its style with 

 every change of service: starting as a beggar with scarce a 

 rag of ' property ' to cover its bones, it turns up as a 

 prince when large undertakings are wanted. ' We must 

 radically change our notions of matter/ says Professor 

 Tyndall; and then, he ventures to believe, it will answer 

 all demands, carrying ' the promise and potency of all 

 terrestrial life/ If the measure of the required ' change 

 in our notions' had been specified, the proposition would 

 have had a real meaning, and been susceptible of a test. 

 It is easy traveling through the stages of such an 

 hypothesis; you deposit at your bank a round sum ere you 

 start, and, drawing on it piecemeal at every pause, com- 

 plete your grand tour without a debt/' 



The last paragraph of this argument is forcibly and ably 

 stated. On it I am willing to try conclusions with Mr. 

 Martineau. I may say, in passing, that I share his con- 

 tempt for the picturesque interpretation of nature, if 

 accuracy of vision be thereby impaired. But the term 

 Vorstellungs-fahigkeit, as used by me, means the power of 

 definite mental presentation, of attaching to words the 



